and let me go back to you, mr. ross. you re the one in the middle of doing these cases. this is what associate justice henry billings brown, this was his logic for separate versus equal back in the plessy decision. he said the most common instance of this separate being fine is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children which have been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power, even for the courts of states where the political rights of the color race have been longest and most enforced. you can do discrimination all you want. as long as you don t explicitly say race you do all the discrimination you want and this supreme court is going to back you up. they made that very clear. you can also harm women. you can do whatever you want, really, as long as you re creative in the way you argue it. and so i wonder for you and ldf, as you all go back before these guys, because you know roberts to elie s point is going to side
who under that president have had their electoral power diminished in violation of a law this court once knew to buttress all of american democracy. now if you need any indication of just how radical this decision is, chief justice john roberts, whose legal career has been devoted to dismantling the voting rights act, finally just gutting it outright in 2013 s shelby decision, he sided with the liberals, accusing his fellow partisans on the court of going too far. in the meantime, litigation will continue. the plaintiff evan milligan said in a statement yes reminded of the strength and digsy displayed by our ancestors who routinely confronted a wide variety of disappointments. we won t dishonor their legacy by putting down the torch they have handed to us. joining me now is elie mystal, joyce vance, former u.s. attorney and co-host of the sisters in law podcast. and senior director of professional development for the
louisiana s separate karst act of 1890. plus, he was new orleans shoemaker and part of a group of activists of color known as the citizens committee who volunteered to challenge louisiana s law, which resulted in his arrest. plessy sued the judge who upheld the law all the way to the u.s. supreme court. and in 1896, in a 7-1 decision, the court ruled that the separate carrs act did not violate the constitution. it s not just what matter what s the court did today, it s how they did it. the justice wrote, quote, laws permitting and even requiring their separation in places where they are liable to be brought into contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other and have been generally, if not universally recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police power, unquote. in doing so, the court became probably the most notorious supreme court in u.s. history. at the time they were arguing
with is it s just too close to the election. what he is essentially saying is even though this court, we sue within being enacted, the court acted with lightning speed and ordered briefing and arguments and a hearing over seven days in january, issued a decision a little more than a week after our seven days of hearings ended and said, you know, we re doing everything that we can, that the elections are not close at hand, and that the supreme court disregarded that and as a unit any kind of changes of redistricting from courts for the 2020 election cycle. and just to stay with you for just a moment. what it seems to me to be the worry here is there are a lot of other states that want to do similar things to voters of color. this is cut fire from my producers, element 5. arizona has a plan to require people to submit a written excuse to early vote. something that black voters, church voters heavily rely on.
text and meaning of the 14th amendment, which guaranteed equal protection. and the supreme court in the shroud versus west virginia case said what is this amendment but that the law shall be the same for the black and the white? and the supreme court unfortunately backtracked from that clear principle in the plessy decision and a horrific decision, which allowed separate by equal. brown versus board corrected that in 1954, of course. corrected it on paper. we re still seeking to achieve racial equality. the long march is not over. brown versus board as i said publicly many times before, the single greatest moment in supreme court history by in so many ways, the uminity that